


Suddenly a Smile, Shyly Obscene

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Bathtub Sex, College AU, F/M, bath bombs, e.e. cummings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 18:45:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: “Holy shit,” Adam hears her say.“What is it?” He comes to lean on the doorframe and finds her staring at a sizeable basket on the counter.“How many bath bombs does one man need?”College AU in which Adam takes Belle to his family's lakehouse for spring break.





	Suddenly a Smile, Shyly Obscene

**Author's Note:**

> "Then I fill the tub of halfway then ride with my surfboard." --Beyonce

Instead of going home over spring break, Belle lets Adam take her to his lakehouse.

“Wait, what?” she’d said when he’d asked her two weeks before vacation started. They’d been tucked away in the corner of their favorite coffee shop, playing footsie under the table. “I thought you said you had a, like a mansion in the historic district.”

He gave an offhand shrug. “That’s our house in the city, yeah, but my dad’s going to be _in residence_ —” he rolled his eyes at the affected pretentiousness of his words, “which means spending break there is right out.”

“So you’re going to the lakehouse.”

“Yeah, it’s probably not going to be very warm, but, hey, that’s what sweaters and tea are for. We have so much tea, Belle, you would absolutely die. And it’s only like, three hours away. Just enough time for a complete _Hamilton_ sing along.” Belle laughed and shook her head. “Is that like a ‘you’re really cute and funny’ head shake or is that a ‘no I don’t want to come to your gorgeous lakehouse and spend a week reading and having unbelievable amounts of fantastic sex’—hey!” Belle had kicked him under the table.

“That’s a ‘you’re kind of annoying but also kind of hot and you make me laugh so yes I will spend a week at your lakehouse’ head shake.”

“Oh.” A grin spread across Adam’s face as he rubbed the sore spot on his shin. “Cool.”

So here they are, in the foyer of a house that has to be at least twice the size of the house Belle grew up in. “Lumière!” Adam yells. “We’re here!”

“Ugh, don’t tell me you have servants on top of having two houses,” Belle teases, but Adam can detect a hitch in her voice that tells him she’s worried that he will tell her exactly that.

“We actually have three,” he says in a rush, “houses, not servants, and we do have a cook and a housekeeper at the main house because my father’s a lazy sod, please doesn’t look at me like that, and Lumière’s my cousin. And frat brother. Who also sometimes helps me pick out, you know, ties and cufflinks and shit, because he’s good at that stuff.”

“And because you’re kind of a metrosexual.”

“And fucking proud.”

“His name is the French word for light?”

“Not exactly,” says a voice from the stairway. A young, impeccably dressed young man descends and reaches out to shake Belle’s hand. “It’s actually Louis Meir, but if you’re my mother and you’re mad at me it all tends to run together.”

“I called him Lumière one day during frat rush,” Adam explains, “and our frat is kinda crazy about dumb nicknames, so it stuck. Lumière, this is Belle. That is her actual name.”

“It suits,” Lumière says, giving her an arch look and a slight bow. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s nice to meet you, finally. I’ve been bugging Adam to introduce me for weeks but he doesn’t share well, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Belle gives Lumière her best scheming smile. “Does he have a dumb nickname too?”

“You can be certain of it.”

“Sometime when we’re alone you must tell me what it is.”

“Oh, I like her,” Lumière says at the same time Adam tells him, “Under no circumstances.”

“Or what?’ Lumière teases. “You’ll tell your father you invited me up here?”

Adam’s face goes stony. “Not funny.”

“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean it.” Adam does that weird frat boy nod thing where he jerks his head back in a manner that apparently translates to _it’s fine, bro, we cool_. “Anyway,” Lumière continues, “I took the bedroom at the end of the hall, and Plumette just texted to say she’ll be here in about an hour. We’ve got dinner covered.” He starts toward a door Belle assumes leads to the kitchen. “I have such _plans_!”

“What did he mean, about your father?” Belle asks as she and Adam haul their bags upstairs.

He sighs. “The short answer is that my father doesn’t like him. He’s a cousin on my mother’s side, and my father is not on speaking terms with any of her family. Lumière’s not allowed at the house in the city, I technically wasn’t allowed to hang out with him when we were younger. But we went to the same high school and only got closer after we ended up at college together and…He’s put up with a lot of shit from me. A lot of shit. And I don’t know where I’d be without him. It’s…he thinks it’s easy to joke about, but I can’t understand how.”

Belle shifts her bags to her shoulder and reaches out for Adam’s free hand. She can’t think of anything to say, but she gives it a squeeze. “And Plumette?”

A smile breaks over Adam’s face. “His girlfriend. Fucking _finally_.”

“As in they fucking finally got together or they’re finally fucking?”

“I imagine the second is a corollary to the first.”

Adam opens the first door they come to, revealing an airy room that Belle decides is straight out of her dreams. One wall is lined with built-in bookshelves, reaching from floor to ceiling and completely filled. There’s a window seat piled with cushions and French doors that open onto a balcony. The bed is huge and soft and covered with a quilt that Belle can’t wait to crawl under. If she can bring Adam and a book, she decides, she will not be getting out of that bed all week.

Adam drops his bags at the foot of the bed and gestures to a door on the same wall as the one they came in. “Bathroom’s through there. Lumière’s got his own, so we don’t have to worry about sharing.”

Belle kicks off her shoes before extracting her cosmetics bag from her suitcase and padding into the fairly spacious bathroom to deposit it by the sink.

“Holy shit,” Adam hears her say.

“What is it?” He comes to lean on the doorframe and finds her staring at a sizeable basket on the counter.

“How many bath bombs does one man _need_?”

Adam gives that laugh she loves, the one so hearty and genuine that his head tips back and any trace of that smarter-than-you frat boy act evaporates. “You’ve discovered my hoard.”

“Good Lord. Let me guess, they’re all from Lush?” Adam gives a lazy nod. “Just how rich _are_ you?”

“I’m sorry, you know that I have three houses and that my father employs help and it’s the _bath bombs_ that are driving home how much money I have?”

Belle turns to face him and folds her arms. “How many of your products are from Lush, Mr. My Skin Routine Is Very Important To Me?”

“Most of them,” he concedes.

“And how much money do you spend every time you have to restock?”

Adam’s gaze drops and she can practically see gears in his head turning as he tries to come up with an answer.

“There you go,” she says. “People who can go into Lush and buy whatever without having to worry about a budget are the functional equivalent of filthy rich. Same goes for people who can buy hardcovers without a second thought.” She turns back to the basket of bath bombs and skims her fingertips over a vibrant blue one. “My dad gets me one of these for my Christmas stocking every year.”

Adam comes into the bathroom and puts his arms around her. “Is he okay with you not coming home for break?”

Belle nods. “I don’t think he was surprised. It’s such a hassle to get home for a week, I probably would have stayed on campus anyway to study.”

“I’m glad you came with me.”

“Me too.”

He drops a kiss on the top of her head. She tilts her face up to kiss him properly, and they stay like that for long moments, losing themselves in the enjoyment of each other. Belle’s heart still flutters in her chest every time she gets to do this. The ability to grab and kiss this beautiful, infuriating man whenever she wants makes her feel positively drunk.

“Hey,” Adam breathes as they break apart. “Do you want to take a bath?”

Belle blinks up at him. “What?”

“You were looking at those bath bombs with considerable longing. You’re on break, dinner won’t be for a few more hours, and that bathtub is so big you can practically swim in it. You can take a bath in the middle of the day, if that’s what you want. That’s what break is for.”

A smile spreads across her face. “Okay then.” She turns back to the basket of bath bombs. “Decisions, decisions.”

“The blue one’s good for muscle aches,” Adam says, standing behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “The pink and purple one is called Sex Bomb, so I think you know what suggestion I would make.” He moves to kiss her neck, but she leans away from him and plucks a multicolored bomb from the top of the pile.

“This one has glitter in it, so that’s what we’re going with.”

“Intergalactic. Stellar choice.”

“You think you’re so clever.”

Belle sits on the side of the tub and turns the knobs to start the tap, testing the water with her hand a few times before she gets the right combination. “I can’t believe the shower and bathtub are separate,” she says. “It’s like you’re trying to occupy as much a space as possible. That shower looks large enough for an orgy. Don’t,” she flicks water at him, “don’t tell me if that’s something you’ve tried. I don’t want to know.”

He gives her an enigmatic smile and now she kind of _does_ want to know, but she’s already made a pronouncement so there’s no going back now. “I’ll leave you to it,” Adam says, gesturing to the tub and turning for the door.

“You can stay,” she says. “Keep me company. Talk to me.”

“I have a better idea.” Belle’s sure she knows what’s coming, so she’s surprised when he disappears into the bedroom for a moment and returns with a book. She turns her head to look at the title but he hides the slim volume behind his back. “Get in while it’s hot,” he says, sitting on the tiled step that leads to the tub. ( _Who has tubs so deep they need a step to get into them?_ Belle thinks.)

She strips off her clothes and slips beneath the water, sinking so low that it comes up nearly to her chin. She decides not to worry about her hair; there’s bound to be a hairdryer around somewhere.

Adam picks up the bath bomb and holds it over the water. “Ready?” She nods and he drops it in, his grin matching her own as it fizzes and dissolves into a rainbow of colors, swirling the water with blues and pinks and yellows and gold glitter.

“It’s the galaxy,” Belle sighs. “I am bathing in the fucking universe.”

Adam opens the book and licks his finger before turning past the title page. “‘may i feel said he _’_ , by e.e. cummings.”

Belle inhales a shaky breath. _Adam Beaumont, you seductive literary bastard._

“ _may i feel said he_

_(i’ll squeal said she_

_just once said he_

_it’s fun said she)_

_(may i touch said he_

_how much said she_

_a lot said he)_

_why not said she._ ”

She sinks even further into the bath, thinking that having a soak while listening to her boyfriend read erotic twentieth century poetry with his gorgeous baritone voice is the sensual experience that may kill her. Not the necking in the stacks, not the after-hours library fucking, _this_.

He reads on, poem after poem, somehow managing to convey cummings’ unconventional punctuation with his voice. Where did he even learn how to _do_ that?

“ _Lady,i will touch you with my mind_ ,” he reads,  
“ _Touch you and touch and touch_  
_until you give_  
 _me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene—_ ” His voice falters; he looks up at her. He doesn’t look confident or cocksure. He looks like he’s gone too long without seeing her face and desperately needs to have a nice stare.

She gives him a slow smile. “Are you touching me with your mind?” she asks.

“I touch you with my mind a hundred times a day,” he breathes. “Do you know how hard it is to pay attention in Shakespeare, with you across the room? It’s even worse in all the classes you’re not in.”

Belle sits up. Steam is still curling from the surface of the water; she likes her baths ridiculously hot. “You could come touch me, not in your mind.” Adam reaches out for her face and she leans away. “But not until you’re wearing fewer clothes. And by fewer, I mean none.”

He stands up, gives a languid stretch, and tosses the book onto the counter by the sink. “As you wish.” _Now_ he looks cocky, almost smug, and Belle is more than ready to kiss that expression off his stupid face. He decides to give her a bit of a show, slowly removing his pullover sweater before yanking his t-shirt over his head in that way he knows she finds absurdly hot. He stretches again so she can stare at his muscles a bit before he unzips his fly and hooks his thumbs through his belt loops to pull down his jeans. He’s tantalizingly slow about it and relishes the way Belle’s mouth falls open as he kicks the jeans away. The lust on her face turns to laughter when he remembers he’s still wearing his socks and gives a little hop as he pulls one off, then the other, and tosses them over his shoulder. His boxers are all that’s left, and he’s obviously enjoying making her wait. He moves his hands to his waistband and raises one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth dimpling in a smirk.

“Oh, get on with it,” she says, rolling her eyes and trying to feign nonchalance. She fails spectacularly, and she knows it. Adam slides his boxers over his hips, revealing himself to her shamelessly. He’s already half-hard, and the way his gaze darkens makes her want to do wicked things to him. He kneels on the tile step and leans in so their foreheads are almost touching. She can vaguely see the corner of his nose wrinkle as he growls at her, soft and dangerously low. She should probably find it ridiculous, she thinks, but instead it’s arousing as hell. She doesn’t know how he gets away with it, but then again, he gets away with nearly everything.

“Get in,” she commands, floating to the front of the bathtub and turning to face him as he settles in against the back.

“What are you all the way over there for?” he asks. There’s the trace of a whine in his voice.

She stretches her legs out and presses her feet against his calves. “What did you mean, when you said Lumière’s put up with a lot of shit from you?”

Adam sighs and splashes water on his face with one hand. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I used to be something of an asshole.”

He scowls at Belle’s bark of laughter. “Used to be?”

“Yeah.” He sounds completely serious. “A douchebag of the highest degree. A lot of hard partying and being sleazy about girls—not criminal, but…gross—and just…being a bastard. A lot of bad habits I picked up from my dad, which is an explanation, not an excuse. And Lumière…at first he didn’t say much, but he never abandoned me, even when I really sucked, and he probably stopped me from hurting people more than I did.

“I was already starting to get a bit better when I met you, partying less because I wanted to hold onto my grades, and after our first class I came home and I told him—I told him there’s this girl in Romanticism, she’s gotta be a new major, and she’s fucking hot but also super easy to wind up, this is gonna be too much fun. And normally I would have left it at that, because my attention span when it came to girls used to be really fucking short, but every Monday and Wednesday I found myself talking about you, what you’d said, how you’d looked at me like you wanted to kill me and I couldn’t wait to see you look at me like that again, and Lumière finally said, dude, if you ever actually want to have a chance with this girl, you have to clean it the fuck up.”

Belle blinks, slowly. “You…did you do that because of _me_?”

Adam shrugs and tips his head to one side. “Yes and no. At first I kind of just liked picking on you, but then I found myself wanting to know everything about you, and talk to you for hours, and find out what you thought about life, the universe, and everything, and I realized that Lumière was completely right. I stopped being such a total ass because it was what I needed to do, but I didn’t think about it seriously enough until I started thinking about you.”

Belle says nothing, but moves herself forward so she’s kneeling on the porcelain floor, straddling Adam and bracing her hands on the back of the tub. Her buoyancy in the water helps her balance herself over him without touching him at all.

For a while they just look at each other, marveling at themselves, the bookworm and the bad boy, the improbability of it all. He leans up to kiss her and she moves away slightly, still not touching him. _Ah-ah_ , her expression says. _We both know who’s in charge here_.

They like to joke that they’re both switch hitters. There are plenty of days when Belle is happy to be pinned to the bed, or the bookshelf, or wherever, when she gives Adam complete control and lets him toss her around, reveling in how much power she has when she does exactly as he says. And then there are the days when everything is her call, when Adam hangs on her every word and can’t follow her orders fast enough. If any of his frat brothers joked about him being whipped, he’d tell them to shut up and be less of a patriarchal ass, but sometimes he thinks to himself that he _is_ a bit whipped, and he likes it.

Belle leans down to kiss him, _finally_ , long and slow and wet. He loves her tongue, not just for the clever things she says with it, but for how she can absolutely destroy him with it. She continues to kiss him with devastating thoroughness as one of her hands drifts between his legs, finding his stiff cock and stroking it with the same rhythm as her tongue moving in and out of his mouth. He’s enjoying himself too much to be ashamed of the whimper that escapes him.

It’s Belle who breaks the kiss, moving away slightly so she can rub the head of his prick against her entrance before she lowers herself onto him, taking him slowly until he’s completely inside her. He barely stops himself from knocking his head against the rim of the tub. She feels so damn _incredible_.

And then she starts to ride him.

She leans forward again and tangles her fingers in his hair, tugging it just hard enough to make him moan. She bites his neck, working from his ear to his collarbone, not even trying to disguise it as kissing.

“Do you like that?” she murmurs in a tone that tells him she’s sure of the answer.

“I like anything you do to me.”

Apparently she takes that as a challenge and rides him harder. She stills suddenly when water splashes over the edge of the tub, but he manages to growl, “Don’t worry about it,” and she’s back in the moment, bracing herself over him and grinding against him faster, deeper, and the look on her face dares him to let go, to lose himself completely in her.

As if he hadn’t already.

She cradles the back of his head with her hand so he can lean it back against the tub without worrying about cracking it open, and his eyes close as she clenches herself around him, once, twice, _God_ , now she’s just having fun torturing him, he’s sure of it.

“What did I ever do you?” he groans. He needs to orgasm fucking _soon_ , but she’s holding back just enough to prevent it. He’s not surprised by how thoroughly she’s learned him. She’s thorough about everything. He loves it. He loves her.

She stills and leans to whisper in his ear, “Consider this revenge for eating me out under the reference desk while I had to _make actual conversation with other people_.”

He opens one eye and gives her a sardonic look. “You realize that punishing me with bathtub sex is not going to dissuade me from doing that in the future.”

Her lips brush against his. “Stop talking.” He closes his eyes as she kisses him fiercely and takes him again, relentless. His hands come to her back, and he can feel his nails digging into her skin. They’re both biters, but she’s usually the scratcher. He wants her to know how it feels, to be so good at giving pleasure that the only thing the other person can do is hold on for the ride. He wears the scratch marks she gives him like medals of honor, and he wants to give her the chance to the same.

Adam knows she hasn’t come yet, and his rule is usually _ladies first_ , but he can’t stop himself now, and he doesn’t think Belle wants him to. “Darling,” he breathes, “you’re perfect.” And then he’s quiet, hips thrusting against hers as he spends inside her, dazzled and lovestruck and utterly exhausted.

She lifts herself off him and floats back to the other side of the tub, waiting patiently for him to regain his faculties of motion and speech. The water’s finally gone lukewarm.

When he finally opens his eyes, she puts her hand on the lever that controls the drain stop and raises her eyebrows. He nods, and she flips the switch to let the tub start draining. They climb out and towel off, first themselves, then the floor. Adam pulls two terrycloth bathrobes out of the closet (“What kind of bathroom has a _closet_?” Belle asks), and they collapse on the bed together.

They lie in silence for long moments, contemplating each other. “You have glitter in your hair,” Adam tells her. “And all over the rest of you.”

“My skin is the fucking galaxy,” Belle says with a smile. “And so is yours.”

He reaches out to stroke her hair. “My sun and moon and stars.”

“So poetic,” she says. “You never finished that last poem.”

 _“(lady i will  
touch you with my mind.)_ ,” he recites from memory, “ _Touch_  
_you,that is all,_

_lightly and you utterly will become  
with infinite ease_

_the poem which i do not write._ ”

She gives him a contented sigh. “I’m so glad I met you.”

“I’m glad you met current-me instead of past-me.”

“I’m just happy I found a guy who’s already undergone as much character development as you have.”

“God, you sound like such an English major.”

“Takes one to know one, nerd.”

“What did you just call me?”

“You wear three-piece suits to class and can quote e.e. cummings from memory. The nerd ship has _sailed_.” She wraps an arm around his waist and snuggles up against him. “Adam…” Her heart is too full for her to express it in words, how she wants him, and can’t imagine a life with anyone else but him, and _loves_ him. So she kisses him instead, leisurely and sweet, trying to tell him that she knows he’s not the man he used to be, that she never wants to be without the man he is today. “This is perfect,” she breathes when they break apart.

“Not quite,” he says, and her brow furrows. “You didn’t finish, earlier.”

“Oh,” she shrugs, “it’s worth it to see you lose yourself completely.”

“For you, perhaps,” he says, sitting up and moving so he’s lying between her legs, “but not for me.”

When she feels his tongue on her she has to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking.

They still haven’t left the bed an hour later when Lumière knocks to tell them it’s almost time for dinner.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born of an anonymous tumblr request for Adam/Belle modern AU + bath bombs and the bomb-ass (pun intended) college AU headcanons that have been circulating and can be found in their most recent form (I believe) here: https://je-suis-em-jee.tumblr.com/post/159723493992/you-got-any-college-aumodern-au-adambelle. This is a somewhat different take on spring break than the one contained therein, but hey, it's fandom, so it all gets to exist at the same time!
> 
> Thanks for reading, awesome nerds.


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